All credit to special teachers, children and heroic parents who turned the tide

Monday, April 05, 2010

KIERAN Kennedy, CEO of Shine, autistic spectrum organisation, says (Letters, March 15) "the present situation is only reinforcing exclusion.

The minister, the Government and the teaching establishment appear to want to ignore the needs of special needs children".

Exclusion? As a primary teacher and as a special needs (SN) teacher, I have seen a massive increase in the inclusion of special needs children in the classroom since about 2001.

Thousands of highly qualified and specifically trained SN teachers engage in daily, intensive 30-60 minute sessions with the child who is also allocated a special needs assistant (SNA) working side-by-side and hour-by-hour with his/her charge.

SN children have overwhelmingly enhanced mainstream schools. Often they bring out a surprisingly consistent caring vein in the other children, as well as cultivating an early understanding as to why we should appreciate difference. SN provision started from a very low base as governments had to be hauled into the modern age by the heroic High Court actions of virtually oppressed parents.

Nevertheless, I believe that in these tough times the above provision should be acknowledged. While it is the function of disability groups to seek constant improvement, what has been achieved should also be appreciated. Our classrooms are crammed – the second-worst pupil-teacher ratio in the entire EU – with spending per pupil remaining low even during the Celtic Tiger years.
When we highlighted this we were told repeatedly by, for example, the then Education Minister Mary Hanafin to consider the whole mega-euro input into the SN area and how this impacted on overall classroom provision.

And did I hear one solitary negative – or even ambiguous – word from the "teaching establishment" that Mr Kennedy pillories so much about the clearly increased classroom workload following the inclusion of special needs?

The record of the INTO is a long and a proud one in this area; the INTO is just about the last group of people on this island which merits Mr Kennedy’s not inconsiderable, if ill-judged, wrath.

Our last general secretary, John Carr, adopted this whole project in a very strong and very personal way.

For decades before, Gerry Quigley, Sean O’Brosnachán and Matt Griffin actively campaigned for the rights of SN children when nobody else but specific disability groups, great voluntary groups and some churchmen like bishops Lucey and Birch were showing any interest.

Mr Kennedy contemptuously describes us as "qualified" teachers; no further comment necessary here.

Worse again, the thousands of SN teachers I mentioned earlier merit just one passing, vague mention in the course of a very long letter. How’s that for virtual exclusion?

In truth we SN teachers are consigned here to virtual non-existence. Mr Kennedy’s fleeting reference to us begins, "talk to teachers who deal with special needs and they will tell you ..." He tells us here that we believe our training in the SN area is inadequate.

After years of in-service training from specialised practitioners – full working days and week-long online summer courses spent studying, for example, the autistic spectrum area – I certainly don’t believe that.

Purporting comprehensively to represent the views of others is one of the defining traits of the polemicist, and Mr Kennedy speaks not only on behalf of the Shine organisation, but – repeatedly – on behalf of disability groups compositely, on behalf of all SNAs – and even on behalf of all parents of SN children at one crucial point.

Teachers, parents and SNAs should be left to get on with each other as well as we generally do.

Mr Kennedy does acknowledge several times the multiple demands on classroom teachers today, and makes an excellent case for the officially unacknowledged, unofficially acknowledged, education input of SNAs to be recognised – even if he derails this somewhat by raising something of a March hare about SNAs’ pay being somehow linked to that of teachers.

I found this a divisive letter, a letter brimming with grievance but very short on due acknowledgement. I think it’s significant that the great headway made in recent years in second-level schools in SN provision isn’t once adverted to.

I think the Shine organisation should think about the weaknesses and inefficiencies inherent in any partisan approach.

Ristéard Pardi
Beechwood Park
Ballinlough
Cork

This story appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Monday, April 05, 2010